


Septem

by Lily (alyelle)



Category: Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 04:13:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15549360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyelle/pseuds/Lily
Summary: There's seven years of Hogwarts, but only one Penny Haywood.





	Septem

**Author's Note:**

> This vies for the most ridiculous thing I have ever written, EVER. And I am including my twelve year old self's attempt at a four-way fandom crossover in amongst that. 
> 
> I make no apologies, and hold no regrets. Dedicated to my Chef, with love. #wife goals

At first, she’s nothing: a half-glimpsed face in a crowd of first years, a name in a too-long list of names, neither too close to, nor too far from, your own. A name you don’t even remember until your first double Potions when Snape calls the roll. She chooses the bench beside yours, and when you reach the doorway together at the end of the class, she smiles politely, ushering you ahead.

_i._

Soon she’s a rumour, a whisper that passes from mouth to mouth as you and your classmates rush between classes, hushed syllables shaping words like _so pretty_ and _most popular_. She starts to flit at the edges of your vision, on the other side of the Great Hall during lunch or in the highest stand of the bleachers at the first Quidditch game of the year. Teachers praise her deftness and her insight. Her braids, which twitch back and forth while she takes notes from the front row of Charms class, are always perfect. _She _is perfect, you find yourself thinking one day, and it stops you dead in the middle of the corridor.__

__Rowan tugs on the sleeve of your robe, frowning slightly as you fumble through an explanation that could almost be true. As the pair of you descend the stairs to the dungeons, she’s suddenly there, walking out of the Hufflepuff common room with a bright smile and her hair flicked back over her shoulders. Penny Haywood._ _

__After that she’s everywhere, bewitching your mind, ensnaring your senses more effectively than any of Snape’s promised creations. She still chooses the bench beside yours sometimes, but she is always surrounded by a gaggle of students: beautiful, popular, charming to a one. They hang from her words. They hug her in greeting and farewell. They brush elegant fingers against her hands. You envy them that. The ease of familiarity is forbidden to you, and on the rare occasions when her smile rains sunshine down on you, your answers are lost in stammers._ _

____

_ii._

Your find reasons to talk as the weeks become months, and without warning, you can’t get enough of her. Where once you were content with glimpses snatched every so often, you’re now ravenous. You take paths you know she will cross; you gorge yourself on the sight of her, ahead of you in the hallway or on the opposite side of the classroom. She starts sitting next to you more regularly, and her nearness sends shivers down your spine. You inch closer one day, terrified that she’ll pull away, but she turns to you and smiles, bumping your shoulder with her own, and it is all you can do not to devour her then and there.

You stop eating at breakfast. Rowan asks if you’re hungry and you shake your head slowly. _I’m starving_ , you think to yourself, _I’m famished_. But not for food; for the sheen of her hair and the sound of her voice. For the way her eyes sparkle blue like the summer sea. For her laughter, and the way her braids fall back from her face; for the delicate fingers that occasionally squeeze your own as she says goodbye. 

One day she joins you at lunch, offering you a spoon to share the enormous slice of treacle tart in front of her. You shake your head and she smiles gently. When Rowan spots Ben across the Great Hall and dashes up to speak to him, she presses the spoon into your hand once more. “My parents were always dieting,” she says softly. “But you don’t need to. I think you look just fine.” You can’t find the words to tell her she’s misunderstood, so you just smile back, drinking her in as you fill your mouth with thick, rich syrup.

_iii_.

The war of light and dark begins in earnest. She sits with you at every lunch hour, radiating sunshine while Rowan glowers in the background. She calls to you in the courtyard, laughing as she tosses her braids out of her eyes while setting up another game of gobstones; Rowan huffs and sighs and perches on a bench nearby, narrow eyes trained on the two of you. More and more, you resent that constant hawk-nosed presence, the sharp sarcasm that cuts off the jewel-toned syllables as they drip from Penny's sweet lips.

You spend the evenings together, more often than not, studying ancient curses and clandestine passageways as well as this week’s Transfiguration task. Rowan corners you one night as you leave the library, reminding you once again that you should spend more time in the common room. It’s a familiar routine now. _Your house is your family here. You need to make room for them._

You consider telling Rowan to fuck off, a Muggle expression Penny taught you through giggles last Hogsmeade weekend. Instead you brush past, clutching your books to your chest and stalking as quickly as you can through the halls to your dormitory.

_iv._

People start to notice, and with their consciousness comes yours. You take better care of your hair. You shave more often. You rise early to prepare, and stay out late to be seen; you thrill when people watch her watching you. Lesser beings gaze at the pair of you, drawing breaths as she ghosts her fingers over your shoulder or cooing when she loops her arm through your own. You drink down their adoration like ambrosia.

You trade Quidditch practice for shopping, looking for the perfect outfit to wear on the next Hogsmeade visit, your first official date. Neither of you take any pains to hide your intent. You spend more Galleons than you should on a fancy dinner; you stroke hands, lace fingers into one another's, and share a dessert. When you leave her at the door of the Hufflepuff common room, you kiss her goodbye while the weighty eyes of the onlookers caress your shoulder-blades. 

Eventually, even the most isolated corners of the school know about you. Everyone has an opinion, not all of them good. You ignore the jibes. During the end of term celebrations, the pair of you are given matching miniature willow trees, enchanted to sway in the breeze. A snake twines around one branch with a bumblebee hovering nearby, and every few hours it sends up a spray of tiny leaves that alternately spell out "most unlikely couple" or "most adorable". Classmates you rarely speak to, people you don’t even know, congratulate you both. Rowan is the only one who stops talking to you, and in the midst of the smiles raining over you, you just can’t summon the energy to care.

_v_.

You lose your lessons to daydreams if you're apart, or surreptitious flirting if you're together. Penny drifts in and out of your thoughts like mist. Her face floats in your crystal ball during Divination; in Astronomy, it paints itself on the navy sky in stars.

She nudges your knee with her own during Charms. In Potions, she snakes a single finger up the inside of your leg, always when Snape is closest to you, and you grit your teeth in pleasure and frustration. You feign sickness during one Herbology lesson and instead of the hospital wing, you rush back to your dormitory. It is silent as the grave, a silence you shatter with gasps as you lie there, head tipped back, your hands filling in for her mouth as they stroke between your legs. 

Somehow you scrape E’s in every subject, celebrating with Butterbeer that she's charmed in secret. The bubbles creep up your nose, tickling and tormenting; her laugh when you sneeze them out in rainbows is like the song of the angels. That night, you sneak her back into your dormitory and keep her awake until the Great Lake glitters, brilliantly aqua under the morning sunlight.

_vi_.

Your study hours become days, then weekends. They pass too quickly as you paw at one another, clutching and grasping. The closest your bodies will fit together is still never quite close enough.

You ask your parents to buy a Muggle telephone during Christmas break, and press it to your ear once, twice, three times a day, your fingers slipping each time in eagerness as they wind the numbers on the plastic dial. You hoard her words like treasure, sorting and polishing them. Rubies of greeting; emeralds of farewell. Pure, glittering diamonds of sentiment, and every glint yours.

You squeeze her in wherever you can when school resumes. You walk her to the classes you don't share, reluctant to let go of her even for a moment. You sneak into your dormitory, or hers, hungry and desperate. You drink her in, over and over, filling yourself with her weight and her scent as her hands rake long red marks down your skin.

_vii_.

When the exams are over, when you have collected your fill of E’s and a couple of surprise O’s, you leave hand in hand. Seven years of history looms behind you as you bundle her into a carriage, and fades into the distance as her head lolls to the side, coming to rest on your shoulder.

There will be weeks of sleeping in to come. Months of hands and bodies entwined in the morning; of baking and decorating; of family, friends, and dinner parties, where you surprise your loved ones with your new appreciation of wine, and she spreads laughter in her wake like butter on toast. 

There will be time. But now, it is summer, and you are seventeen. Now it is time for indulgence, for indolence, for fucking and dreaming and all the fleshy, mortal sins that comprise your perfect imperfections. Now is the moment that stopped you dead in the middle of a corridor all those years ago, realised and ripened, hanging in front of you ready to be plucked.


End file.
